Chapter Text
Origin
~*~
It’s… underwhelming.
Brown and shriveled and fragile, it its shell of glass. There’s no indication of the incredible power it holds, of the power to give life. And yet she can’t help but feel fondness towards it, feel a pull in her heart to this little wrinkled flower, the only reason she’s standing here today.
And then it’s gone, stolen by Varian and suddenly she has so much more to worry about.
She doesn’t think about the flower for a long time.
~*~
She asks him about it, later.
After.
After the kidnapping and the assault on Old Corona, after the automatons and near death and the black rocks. After the arrest and the trial and the sentencing. After sleepless nights and tired discussions and so many tight, frightened hugs she’s lost count.
She tries to keep her voice casual, standing awkwardly in the secure room that’s become his ‘cell,’ with nothing but a bed and a little dresser and his pet racoon. She fails, it seems, when he gives her a look. It’s the first time she’s been down to see him, after all, too busy worrying about how her mom and Cass have been recovering, and busy with preparations to leave, to follow the path laid out by the black rocks. Too stricken with turmoil and regret and even a little fear. So it’s the first time she’s seen him and he knows her question wasn’t made lightly.
He looks at her and she can see some glimmer of the boy he was before- the spark of curiosity, the scientist in him wondering about the ‘how’- and she sees the bitterness quickly rise up to swallow it. When he speaks, there’s that hard, cruel line of sick satisfaction, of the desire to hurt, curled into his lips.
“I crushed it into dust.”
She lets out a slow breath. He doesn’t stop her when she turns away to leave.
It’s sad, but now she knows. She cannot and will not find her answers here.
Her origin is not here.
~*~